


don't give a damn ('bout your bad reputation)

by DarknessAroundUs



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Betty Cooper & Sweet Pea Friendship, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Newspapers, Southside Serpent Betty Cooper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 03:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17521103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: Southside Serpent Betty Cooper meets Jughead Jones at NYU.





	don't give a damn ('bout your bad reputation)

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many AUs where a roll reversal takes place in terms of sides of town, and Jughead and Betty. All of them, in my experience, are set in high school.
> 
> I loved the idea of writing something where they met later on. I played around with a lot of different ways this could go, including them 1) meeting at Riverdale Community College, 2) them meeting for the first time in their early thirties. But ultimately this was the story-line that worked for me.

If cliched statements are to be believed, this was the first day of the rest of Betty’s life. Only it doesn’t really feel that way. She slips into new bootcut jeans and a blue t-shirt. Nothing ripped or torn. 

It is a bright sunny fall day, no need for a coat or even a sweater. She debates for a second between the new pair of Keds she purchased and her old worn pair of Red Wings she bought at the thrift store years ago. Betty chooses the Red Wings. She sticks her beat up laptop in her new used backpack and heads for the door.

“Where are you going?” Sweet Pea calls from where he’s sprawled on the couch playing video games.

“To class,” Betty shouts back. 

Sweet Pea hits pause on his game and strides across the room towards her. “Did you really think I would let you leave for your first day of college without even saying goodbye?”

“No,” Betty says shaking her head. They may have only become roommates a month ago, but they’d shared their whole life together, before that, shouting through the windows of their respective trailers. 

Betty had moved to New York to attend NYU. Sweet Pea was here because he had to get out of Riverdale, and he could work in a kitchen here just as easily as he could anywhere else.

Sweet Pea gives her a hug. He feels like home, far more than her mother, far more than the trailer, or even the whole damn trailer park. 

“I won’t be back till late.” Betty says. Today’s Sweet Peas day off work. She doesn’t want him to waste it worrying about her. 

“Neither will I.” Sweet Pea says with a wink. Betty just shakes her head, closing the apartment door behind her, laughing. 

Her first class, English Literature 101 feels a little like highschool reheated, but her second class, Journalism in the Digital Age, lives up to the college hype. She takes notes as quickly as her fingers can type. 

She glances around the classroom. In the sea of students she fits in. Nothing about her stands out. If she was wearing the clothes she normally wore, the ones she felt most comfortable in, she would stand out. In this setting, she would look she was wearing a costume. Like that one guy she had seen on the subway wearing 1940’s clothes for no particular reason that she could discern. At Southside she blended in with her leather jacket and her torn jeans, here she would look absurd. 

After class she smokes a cigarette and one of the girls from the class introduces herself and bums a smoke. Only then does Betty realize that she hasn’t interacted with any of her fellow students. 

In fact the whole first week the only interactions she has with fellow students are in the context of smoking. She doesn’t mind too much. She has Sweet Pea at home and they spend time together most days. Toni comes up on Friday and they go out to their first meeting with the New York Serpents. 

Betty’s not surprised when they assign her a job tailing a rival gang member. Back in Riverdale Betty’s work for the Serpents involved sleuthing. It makes sense that her reputation precedes her. Sweet Pea’s has as well apparently, because he’s working protection all over again. 

When he learns this he jokes that he shouldn’t have gotten rid of his brass knuckles. Betty just laughs. She had actually unpacked them herself by mistake. Though she had put them away in a kitchen drawer, hoping they wouldn’t need to be needed here. 

It is a reminder that while they’ve left Riverdale, they haven't left everything behind. It is a strange feeling, comforting and upsetting at the same time. Betty wants to talk to Sweet Pea about it but whenever she tries, he makes it clear that he’s not interested. 

During the second week of classes she stops caring so much about blending in. She misses her old self too much. She hauls her combat boots out from under the bed, and wears flannel as the weather turns colder. 

Betty only wears her Serpent Jackets to meetings now, even if she finds herself sleeping with it once a week. She doesn’t have another leather jacket, so she wears a green corduroy one instead.

She befriends a guy in her required science class, a fellow smoker named Adam and they spend odd hours together talking about music. 

But mostly Betty’s too busy to socialize with new people. School and the work it requires takes up the bulk of her time. Besides her Serpent work she has a job bussing tables to keep her student loans in check, she hopes.

Still Betty knows that if she is going to get a job after college she has to do something related to her chosen field. 

On the first day of October, Betty makes her way to the offices of the school paper. The room she enters is full of other freshmen, all vying for the same few internship positions. Betty presses her nails into the palm of her hand, but not aggressively enough to break skin. Just being away from her mother seems to have helped with that habit. 

The head editor, Matthew Jacobs, starts talking. He tells everyone that this is a mass interview. The first thing they are going to do is go around the room and mention their previous editorial experience. 

That is when Betty notices Jughead Jones. A feeling of shock runs through her. He’s slouched on one of the sofas. They’ve never properly met, but they both grew up in Riverdale. She knows his father, and even outside of that she’s heard a lot about him. 

He is unsmiling, but his eyes are bright, taking in the room. It doesn’t seem like he’s spotted her yet. She is surprised to see him here. She didn’t know anyone else from Riverdale who was studying at NYU. She had just assumed she was the only one. Although clearly she was wrong.

Around the room people start to answer Matthews question about experience. Matthew gets to Betty and he asks what her experience is, and she answers “I was the head editor for my school newspaper the Black and Red for four years.” 

Matthew keeps going till he reaches Jughead. Jughead says “I was the head editor of the Blue and Gold for four years.” 

Matthew looks confused. “Didn’t someone else already say that.” 

Betty knows he’s referring to her. “No. I was the editor of the Black & Red, he was the editor of the Blue & Gold. We went to two different High Schools in the same town. We were the heads of their respective newspapers.”

“Oh.” says Matthew, Jughead sends Betty a nod across the room.”So you know each other?”

“We know of each other, which is different.” Jughead says, softly. Betty can’t help but find the whole situation sort of awkward. She has no idea what he knows about her, but she can guess some of it.

“Ok.” Matthew says before moving on. 

Three days later Betty finds out that she has one of the internships and so does Jughead. They share an office, or more accurately a cubicle. Betty’s setting up her filing system when he arrives and he surprises her when he says hi. She drops a couple of files before returning the greeting. 

“I think we're sharing an office because Matthew thinks we’re friends.” Jughead says. “I don’t think he knows how small towns work.”

Betty nods, but doesn’t say anything. 

“We should at least try and get to know each other. Do you want to go get coffee?”

“Sure.” Betty replies and they head over to Think Coffee. Betty gets drip and adds sugar to it. Jughead gets a quad Americano and adds nothing to it. The cafe is too crowded to stay there, but it is still warm enough out for the parks to be enjoyable, so they take their coffee over to a bench in Washington Square Park. 

“This feels strange,” Betty says. “We’ve never really met, but i’m sure we know a lot about each other anyways, some of it true, some of it not.”

“Agreed,” Jughead nods. “How about this, we tell each other something we’ve about the other, and we can clarify if this statement is a truth or a rumor. It might help clear the air.”

“Sure.” Betty says. She wonders who between the two of them was the more gossiped about. Both for entirely different reasons, of course. “You can go first.”

“You were the queen of the Southside Serpents, rumor or fact?”

“Not a fact.” Betty is not exactly sure how to answer this one, because there is some truth to it. She still feels guilty about leaving them for this reason. Her mother, Alice, is technically still in charge. But she’s a drug addict. Often high and unreliable. Demanding one minute, absent the next. 

Betty had been running for Southside Serpents for four years, unofficially. Toni was now, in her steed. But officially Alice would remain Queen for as long as she wanted to. It was easier that way for everyone. Alice took the name of her position much more seriously than the position itself. 

Betty never cared for the title, it always seemed like the punchline to a sick and twisted joke about generational poverty. 

The problem was that she didn’t know how to explain this to Jughead without exposing too much. She decided to keep it simple. “I was in charge, but not the queen. That is an honorary title held by mother.”

“Ok.”

“Did you really see Clifford Blossom kill Jason?” Betty says this sentence quickly, all the words sliding into each other. The Blue & Gold had gotten the scoop on that story, even better than the official town newspaper. 

“Yes. But just a recording. I didn’t know what it was, when I first found the USB drive. I wasn’t expecting to see what I saw.”

“I’m sorry.” Betty says. 

“Did you really kill a man?”

“There is a rumour that I killed a man?” Betty’s a little shocked. Jughead just nods. “Obviously not.” and then even though he hadn’t asked she felt compelled to add more. “The most criminal thing i’ve ever done is breaking and entering. I’ve done a lot of that, but I’ve never taken anything.”

“Why not?” Jughead asks. 

“I don’t have to answer that, because it has nothing to do with a rumor. It’s my turn anyhow. Are you and Archie Andrews romantically involved?” Betty feels strange asking that question, but it’s something that has come up time and time again. 

Archie Andrews was not the Serpents favorite person. Jughead mostly stayed out of the tension between sides, Archie on the other hand seemed to exacerbate things regularly, but everyone in town knew Jughead and Archie were best friends. Some people said more than that. 

“Hell, no. He is my best friend though.” Jughead says with a shrug. “Why do you care?”

“He broke my best friend’s arm, among other things. His reputation on the Southside is far from great.”

“The reputation of the Southside is far from great.” Jughead spits out. Betty can see the fire in his eyes, and she can’t help but admire it a little, even if he’s slandering her part of town. 

“Any other questions for me?” Betty asks, changing the subject. 

“No, and before you ask me - yes, my father is an alcoholic.” Jughead says, staring out into the park, not meeting her gaze. 

Betty can’t help but laugh, he stares at her in puzzlement so she says. “How could I not know that? His regular haunt is the Whyte Wyrm. I would sometimes see your dad six days a week.”

“That’s more than I would see him. My mom always thought she could cover it up. I guess she was even less successful at that than I thought.”

“Most teenagers don’t spend all their time at a bar.” Betty says, but she feels for him. She knows something personal about him, that he would rather she not. She might as well return the favor. “In any case my mother’s a drug addict.”

Jughead rolls his eyes at her. “You didn’t have to tell me that.” 

Betty shrugs. “I read the Blue & Gold you know, your dad would bring it for me every week. You did a good job running it.”

“Thanks. I admired the Red & Black too. You were more real, less fluff.”

“That’s because we had like two contributors and were only two pages long. You regularly filled five whole pages.” 

“Don’t remind me. If I never have to read an article by Midge Klump again, I will die a happy man.”

Betty laughs. She can’t help it. It feels like the first real laugh she’s had in days. Jughead is more honest than she expected, more quirky.

After that things do become easier between them. They develop a banter and a comfortable routine structured around work and office sharing. She tries not to be jealous of his macbook pro and his speciality coffee. 

They are a good team. Both are serious about the newspaper in a way the other interns don’t seem to be. They regularly run interviews together and edit pieces. Mostly they don’t talk about personal things. 

They never mention Riverdale. Betty knows she’s glad to be out of there, and it’s pretty clear that Jughead is too.

She admires his sarcasm. He might be from the Northside, with a successful lawyer mom, and an actual picket fence, but they both have edges about them, she’s sure the other students notice. 

One of the times they’re stuck talking to a larger group of interns at a party it comes up that both of them have spent a lot of time overnight at friends houses growing up, and it strikes the others as odd. 

Betty realizes that out of the eight college students they are hanging out with, they are the only two that had home lives that discouraged staying at home. 

Because they are both the children of addicts (another thing they don’t speak of), they are the odd ones out at press day parties, when everyone else gets drunk, they are the two people that sit together in the corner, making one glass last all night.

They also help preserve each other's secrets. When someone asks Jughead what is the biggest story he has ever broken, Betty quickly interrupts with a long story about class divisions. Jughead buys her coffee later and she knows that is his way of saying thanks. 

Betty wears her old beat up Frye’s to the office one day, because she spent the weekend on her bike doing a run with Toni. She doesn’t even think about the shoes till Matthew teasingly asks If she’s about to leave them for a motorcycle gang. 

Betty feels her body turns red till Jughead sarcastically jokes that maybe they’ll let him join as well, and all of a sudden the tension dissipates, and the attention of everyone swerves away from her. 

She makes snickerdoodles that night, brings them in for him the next morning. He smiles when he sees them, and she feels her heart move in her chest. He eats four in a row, his eyes twinkling. 

In November they break a story, an actual story, about a Professor who faked his work history. They both stay in the city to work on the story over Thanksgiving break. 

That weekend Betty visits Jughead’s dorm room for the first time, and she sees his perfectly matching sheets and duvets. The framed photos on the wall. The fancy speaker system. The nice new couch. She thinks of her apartment, the unmatching furniture that she and Sweet Pea have scrounge-d together. 

She has holes in her socks that she only notices as they eat take out on the sofa.

“Do you miss your family?” He asks. It is Thanksgiving after all. Sweet Pea was probably enjoying communal dinner at the Whyte Wyrm right now, having gone home two days before.

“Not my mom.” Betty says. Her dad has never been in the picture, so it’s not like he is even worth missing. “But Toni, Fangs, and Sweet Pea, I miss them.”

“I get that.” Jughead says. “I miss Archie.”

“But not your mom?” Betty asks. She knows FP isn’t a good dad, for obvious reasons. But Jughead’s mom Gladys seems to have her head on straight. She’s one of the most respected lawyers in town.

“Not really. She’s too busy with her career to really be around.” Jughead pauses “I get why. She’s the reason I’m here now. Why I don’t have to be financially stressed about any of this.” Betty tries not to feel jealous. 

Jughead eats a massive bite of pad thai and Betty has to look away because it is too gross not to. Although she’s used to it. Pea is no better. 

When she looks back at him he’s staring at her. “What?” 

“Is that why you joined the Serpents? Because they felt like family?” Jughead asks. 

“Sort of. I mean you have to know that Fangs, Toni, Pea and I were close long before we became Serpents. Pea and I have never not been friends. The first memory I have is of sharing a bath with him. We were maybe three. His mom looked after both of us while my mom worked and visa versa. Toni, we met in Kindergarten, Fangs in third grade.”

“Oh.” Jughead says. “Archie and I were kind of like that. We’ve been next door neighbors since kindergarten.” 

Betty can sense that he’s disappointed. That she didn’t answer the real question he was asking. 

“We all had to join the Serpents for basically the same reason. At Southside High if you’re not in a gang you’re vulnerable. Plus they’re way better than the other options. Most of what I did, outside of running it, is the stuff I do for the paper.”

“Writing and editing?” Jughead says, skeptically. Betty laughs.

“No, the research end. Investigating people’s lives. Looking up information about them. That sort of thing. The breaking and entering I told you about was just part of the investigation. Although obviously I wouldn’t do that for the paper.”

“Oh. That’s not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Tire irons and brass knuckles.” Jughead says, an embarrassed look on his face “Drugs too. Maybe guns.”

“Sweet Pea is more on the tire irons and knuckles end of things. I’m not saying there isn’t violence, I just wasn’t really involved in that. As for guns they are a no go, and outside of weed, there is no dealing either.”

An embarrassed look crosses Jughead's face and Betty is debating on pressing him about it when he says, “I knew that. I’ve bought weed from Serpents.”

Betty laughs. “I don’t smoke outside of cigarettes. I tried it once. Made me paranoid. Who sold it to you? Anyone I know?”

“Pink hair. Toni I think.”

“Definitely Toni.” Betty says with a smile. 

“It doesn’t make me paranoid. It mellows me.” Jughead says with a shrug. Betty understands. Pea is the same way.

As she polishes off her panang curry, Betty realizes this is the turning point for them. They’re good friends now, instead of just friends. 

When she trades the curry for noodles, they touch for just a second, their fingers brush, and nothing. Later when he hugs her goodbye, the sort of half hug a boy gives when he doesn’t grow up with girls for friends, she feels so warm, it’s like stepping into an unexpected patch of sun. 

Working together becomes easier after that, more enjoyable. They see each other every day, even when they don’t have to. They spend a lot of time in Jughead’s dorm working on homework together, even though they don’t share classes. 

Betty finds herself noticing that one of his curls always falls across his forehead. She notices the gentleness and agility of his hands. But she’s spent most of her life with boys for friends, so she tries to focus on the friendship growing between them.

When they accidently touch, sometimes it’s nothing, like touching any stranger on the street. A normal occurance on a crowded subway. Sometimes there is surprising heat, a hum, as if something else is going on beneath the surface of his skin that is making their blood pump at an alarming rate. 

She’s never felt that before. Betty’s never been with anyone. It’s a secret even Pea doesn’t know about her. She’s never trusted anyone enough to be that kind of vulnerable with them. It’s like an alcohol in a way. She can’t give up the illusion of control. 

The spring semester passes quickly. Jammed to the edges with work on the paper, bussing, time spent talking about books with Jughead, school work, and the occasional job for the Serpents. 

She spends her spring break casing a bar they run protection for, one they think is cooking their books. It turns at that they are. The head Serpent in New York, Jelico, is so pleased with her work that he hires her full time over the summer. 

Two weeks before summer break Matthew announces which interns they are going to hire and which ones they aren’t. Betty and Jughead end up being the only interns that make the cut. Jughead asks her out for drinks to celebrate, and Betty’s budget is so tight she asks him over instead. 

She knows it is just as friends, but she still feels a flutter of something more. Maybe it is the fact that she is anticipating missing him. He is heading back to Riverdale for the summer. His mom has him doing clerk work for him. Maybe it is the fact that now almost every time she touches him, she gets a sense that she is a whisper away from seeing stars. 

 

* * *

Jughead rarely drinks. Having an alcoholic for a parent will do that to you. But he knows that on certain occasions there is nothing wrong with sharing a bottle of wine with someone, or a case of beer. 

He’s chosen wine tonight to bring over to Betty’s apartment. He thinks it will go better with the brownies she’s promised to make. He’s never been to Betty’s apartment before. She’s been to his dorm a lot. He lives on campus, she lives in the middle of nowhere Brooklyn, the far end of Prospect Park.

He’s never had a friend like her, he’s never had a friend that is a her. At least he assumes that is what they are to each other, although the other day Matthew said something that made it clear that he thought they were dating and neither protested with words. Jughead rolled his eyes dramatically and Betty laughed.

Jughead makes his way to her place on the subway. It’s a cool evening for spring and he wearing his sherpa jacket. 

He receives a text when he’s walking to her apartment. It is Betty apologizing because she’ll be about 15 minutes late. She adds that Sweet Pea can let him in. 

Jughead feels a little nervous. He still hasn’t met Sweet Pea. Most of the stories Betty tells about him are funny. But Sweet Pea broke Archie’s nose once. Archie hated his guts generally. They fought three times that Jughead can remember.

 

Jughead spends most of his time with Betty the college student. Betty’s the college student is sweet. She bakes cookies for the people she cares about, she knits on the subway, and gets so excited during research that it’s adorable. She’s smart too, very analytical and focused.

Betty, the former gang leader doesn’t really come up except when she’s pushed into a corner. Once someone who was mentally ill got aggressive with them in Washington Square Park, and Betty scared him off so fast, Jughead couldn’t help but let out a low, impressed whistle. 

He had admired that part of her too. But part of him knows that is why he hasn’t told Archie or his mother, that Betty is his best friend here. 

He also hasn’t told them because part of him wants something more with her. She’s gorgeous. Anyone with eyes can tell that. More than that, he feels this warm tension with her. He likes sitting beside her and working, but he suspects that he would like kissing her just as much. 

The apartment building is large and poorly maintained, but Jughead is buzzed in right away. He takes the elevator and knocks on 4B. The door opens and reveals Sweet Pea. His hair still wet from a shower. He’s got a neck tattoo and a strong build, but there is something young and soft about his face that makes Jughead not very intimidated. 

“Hi, you must be Jughead.” Sweet Pea says waving him in. “Betty talks about you all the time.”

“I could say the same about you.” 

“I think you look vaguely familiar from Pop’s.” Sweet Pea says, sitting down on an armchair and gesturing Jughead towards the couch. 

“I was there all the time.” Jughead shrugs. “Also full disclaimer, I am best friend with Archie.” 

“Betty told me.” Sweet Pea says with a smirk. “But she vouches for you, and I trust her more than anyone.”

“Me too, actually.”

Jughead sits down on the couch. The space is small with two doors leading off of it, and only one window. It seems like the kind of place that would have mice and he tries to not let that bother him. 

“She says you have a job cooking in Manhattan.”

“I started out there, now I’m baking pies in Brooklyn at Four and Twenty Blackbirds.”

“I’ve been there, the pies are incredible.”

Sweet Pea shrugs. “Thanks.” He glances at his phone. “I’ve got to go, but Betty should be here any minute.” Sweet Pea stands up and goes over to a row of hooks Jughead hadn’t noticed earlier, and pulls down a jacket, it says Southside Serpents on the back. It has the familiar symbol.

“So you’ve stayed in them, even in the city?” Jughead asks. His voice is quiet. Sweet Pea pauses and doesn’t say anything for a second as he shrugs the jacket on.

“Yes. The Serpents have a club here too.” 

“Why didn’t you leave like Betty?” Jughead asks. He’s curious. This is the part of Betty he knows the least about. 

A look of shock crosses Sweet Pea’s face and he looks vulnerable for a moment, and then it toughens up, his expression becomes unreadable. “Did Betty tell you she left the Serpents?”

Jughead realizes that Betty has never said anything about leaving them. That was just an assumption he had made. One that seemed to be false because hanging on the wall behind Sweet Pea’s head was another, smaller Southside Serpent jacket. One he didn’t notice earlier.

“I guess she didn’t.” Jughead says.

Sweet Pea smirks, shakes his head and then waves as he leaves. Jughead sits still in the apartment, breathing slowly, and then poking at his phone. Three minutes later, Betty walks through the door with a nervous expression on her face.

“I ran into Pea on the way out.” Betty says. She’s carrying a few bags that she sets on the counter. He knows what she must have talked about with Sweet Pea so there is no point avoiding the conversation that he feels coming like the train in Anna Karenina

Jughead stands up and walks over to the kitchen. It just takes two steps. “I’m sorry I assumed incorrectly.”

“It’s fine.” Betty says, her eyes meeting his. Only then does he realize she’s wearing a dress. A green one. He’s never seen her not in pants before. He thinks suddenly that she must have dressed up for him, and he feels even worse for screwing this up. “I let you assume that. Being in a gang and attending NYU are not generally compatible paths.”

“Why did you stay in?”

She shrugs. “There’s not an easy way out. Besides they pay me to do what I’m good at. It helps support my glamorous lifestyle.” She gestures at the apartment around them. Jughead lets out a sharp laugh. “I’m working for them full time this summer. I’m investigating people they think are withholding money for them.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He’s hurt by her silence, he’s decided, more than anything. 

“Because I didn’t want you to look at me differently.” Betty says. And then to make it clear that their discussion of this is over, she offers him the best brownie he’s ever eaten.

It ends up being a good night. Not a great one. There is this slight air of tension between them, that doesn’t go away.

And then before he knows it, he’s packing up all of his furniture, and putting it in storage for the summer. He’s moving into a shared two bedroom off campus in the fall. In the meantime he goes back to Riverdale for the summer.

He feels a little like he’s traveled back in time. Except instead of having a lazy summer, he spends most days doing work for his mom. Gladys treats him like all her other employees, which means there is a lot of yelling. 

At home his parents are still essentially not speaking. Archie is back from UCLA and they stay up most nights playing video games and talking about girls Archie is interested in. Jughead doesn’t have the right words to describe whatever it is that is going on with Betty, but they text everyday and video chat every week.

It is only on the second last week of summer that the lines between the worlds of college and home blur. He goes to Pop’s with Archie and Sweet Pea is hanging out in a booth with Toni, both chatting. 

Jughead can’t help himself from smiling and waving. Sweet Pea returns the smile and waves them over. 

He surprises Jughead by standing up and giving him a hug. Sweet Pea quietly asks “Are you missing our girl too?”

Jughead chuckles and offers an easy “Yes.” 

Sweet Pea moves over to Archie and extends a hand “Now that our best friends are besties, we might as well move on. Shake on it?”

Archie looks shocked but shakes his hand. “Our best friends are what now?”

Jughead turns to Archie. “I’ll explain later.” Then Jughead extends his hand to Toni “Hi! I’m glad to finally meet you, Betty talks about you all the time.”

“You’re going to see her next week right?” Toni says with a smile.

“Yes. We have big newspaper plans for the week before school.” Jughead says. The rest of the conversation is short but flows well. Archie and Sweet Pea have a similar taste in video games and that helps. Neither seems to want to hit the other.

Only on the way home does Archie bring up Betty. Jughead had of course mentioned his editing partner Betty over the summer, he couldn’t stop himself. But Archie was always a little oblivious. He hadn’t connected the dots.

“Wait, so Betty from the paper is Betty Cooper, Queen of the Southside Serpents - why didn’t you tell me?” Archie asks, both eyebrows raised.

“One, she was never Queen of the Serpents, and two, I just didn’t know how. She’s so different at school.”

“But she’s your best friend at school, right?” Archie asks.

“Yes.” Jughead says. “Definitely. She and I spend most of our free time together.”

“But you’re not dating?” Archie asks.

“No.” Jughead says. Although he has thought about it a bit this summer, of course he has. He’s missed the physicality of her. Her hugs and accidental touches. 

“But you want to.” 

Jughead shrugs. He’s never been good at the dating thing. Outside of one spectacularly terrible date with Ethel Muggs in High School, he had never really dated. And if he could strike that one date from the record, he would. 

“Is the fact that she’s a Serpent stopping you?” Archie asks. Jughead hates that Archie has just said out loud the question that Jughead has been asking himself all summer long. 

But in a way it is good that someone finally says it out loud because Jughead answers the question, instantly “No.”

“It should.” Archie says looking very serious. “She killed a man.”

Jughead laughs and shakes his head. “No, she didn’t. That is a completely false rumor.”

“My mom always says that every rumor contains a grain of truth.”  
“Oh, is that right?” Jughead says raising one eyebrow. “Have you heard the rumor that we’re dating then?”

The look on Archie’s face is one that Jughead will treasure forever. He didn’t know his friend could get that red. “You're just making that up.” 

“No. I’m not. Do you want to quote your mom again?”

“No, man. I’m good.” Archie says, with a smile. “People say the craziest things.”

A week later Jughead is hugging Betty like he’ll never let her go. She looks different after a whole summer apart. Not just tanner, but older, more serious. 

When he finally releases his arms from their position around her, he can’t stop himself from kissing her tentatively on the lips. He surprises himself by doing it, and he must surprise her too, because she pulls back for a second. Then before he can apologize she’s kissing him.

It is soft and warm and everything he hoped for. When she pulls back this time, he can’t help but notice that the skin around her lips is red, and he thinks, I did that. 

He feels content all the way through. Like he is somehow basking in the sun, even though they are in his new apartment, which just has one small window.

“So more than just friends.” He says, and she nods, the smile on her lips so appealing he just has to kiss it off. 

The funny thing about dating your best friend is that it isn’t that different from not dating your best friend, most of the time. Most of the time they still spend working together and eating together. Joking about Jughead’s roommate or the new round of newspaper interns, that Matthew likes to call “duds”. 

But there are different things of course. For two months those different things mostly come down to lots of kissing, with increasingly fewer clothes on. After that, while they spend a lot of time in one bedroom or the other. 

Although Jughead would never tell Archie this, he suddenly gets why Archie is women obsessed, always trying to find someone to sleep with. Although for Jughead he can’t imagine wanting the person he has sex with to be anyone other than Betty. 

What shocks Jughead, is that what already is good, keeps getting better. 

Slowly, other things change too. At first it is just that Jughead takes Betty to meet his therapist, a sentence he can’t even imagine uttering a year ago. 

Then it is Jughead getting to know the other Serpents a little. At this point he and Pea are friends. Real friends, the kind that hang out, smoke weed, and play video games without Betty. So it doesn’t seem so strange to hang out a bar with the other Serpents. After all he’s not just dating one. 

One evening Jughead gets a phone call from Pea. “What’s up man?” He says, casually. Jughead’s walking through the park on his way home.

“Where are you?” Pea’s voice is full of stress. 

“Washington Square Park.”

“Great. Betty’s doing surveillance near the flatiron building right now, but i’ve got a bakery emergency, and I don’t ever let her do this alone…”

“I can go there. I can stay with her.” Jughead says, already changing directions.

“Great. Thank you! I owe you.” Sweet Pea hangs up before Jughead can correct the statement of who owes who. 

He spends all night with Betty, first on the street and then in a borrowed car, as they follow a man. It’s thrilling for about an hour and then it becomes dull, but comfortable. He likes spending time with her, this is no exception. Before they part ways he makes her promise that she won’t ever do a job without him or Pea.

After that he’s more in the Serpents world than out. When he is in junior year, he’s officially asked to join, but he feels ambivalent and Betty is opposed. Still even without the jacket, tattoo, or the meetings, there is little that goes on in the Serpent world that he doesn’t know about. Sweet Pea likes to Joke that Jughead’s an old lady. 

He grows used to this life, accustomed to it. Just as he has grown used to the small green snake that is on the side of Betty’s hip, a shock at first, and then just one part of the whole package.

**Author's Note:**

> This is way longer than I planned it to be, and it ends sooner. Initially I explored a lot more in terms of family reactions and long term implications of the relationship. I will tell you that they end up back on the Southside. 
> 
> I came up with this whole idea that Gladys doesn't get pregnant with Jellybean and instead gets a law degree. 
> 
> Forgive me my typos!
> 
> I am always very grateful for feedback!
> 
> P.S. Due to some encouragement from KittiLee there is a chance i might add a part 2, so if you want to encourage that/see it if it happens, please subscribe.


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